There are more occult healers in Russia than professional doctors, a leading Russian psychologist, Andrei Yurevich from the Russian Academy of Sciences, said on Monday at RIA Novosti news conference.

Russian newspapers are full of ads for all manner of urban witches and wizards, and an Internet search for Magicheskie Uslugi (Magical Services) brings up a vast number of websites offering to satisfy every conceivable human desire – for a price.

“According to World Health Organization data, there are some 800,000 sorcerers and wizards in Russia,” says Mr. Yurevich, and he continues “As for professional doctors, there are around 640,000”.

Since 2008, the Federal Scientific Clinical Center for Traditional Methods of Diagnostics and Healing has been issuing permits to practitioners of what it calls “traditional medicine” – an extremely broad definition that includes both folk medicine and psychic healers.

The late 1980s saw an explosion of belief in the paranormal and the occult in the Soviet Union.